New fence

This is our new fence, isn't it nice? When I was growing up there was always a gate in this fence which allowed us to access the Muir lot without going around the block. The fence was repaired and replaced several times but always there was a gate which let us know that we were always welcome to the Muir home. Always we had to make our way through the corral, past the outhouse, and then to the back door of the Muir home. We hardly ever knocked, just opened the door and yelled, "Are you home?" We loved going there and it seems fittin' that there is no gate there now. It just ain't the same!

magic basketball

We finished the pictures in the tunnel, then Jared started bouncing his ball against the wall. "Wait, let me get a picture of that!" I said. We got some pretty neat shots with the basketball suspended in mid air.

Jared

Oops, I got the same picture twice. Oh well. I love the colored one in his school colors. Check out the shoes.

Our basketball star

We took Jared to our favorite tunnel for a photo shoot yesterday. We Got some awesome pictures and he had a ball. He's not famous for liking to have his picture taken but we had fun.

Jack Turns One

Jack is finally one. We are so happy he is in our lives. We had Alyssa here for the special day so we took the family to a local hot spot for gourmet popcicles. Jack enjoyed his first popcicle and he ate the whole thing.

We had another, more formal, celebration on Sunday. We made a birthday cake for Jack and Alyssa and opened presents.

I think Kennedy and Tristan were more excited about the gifts than Jack. The cake, however, was enjoyed by even the littlest of my kids.

We have enjoyed having Alyssa with us. It's given us a good excuse to do things that we don't normally do like go to Duke Gardens for a picnic, visit the science museum, play games, go to a movie and finally, go to a musical. We will be sad to send her home tomorrow. She is really easy to have for company.

The Beards are at it again!

Hey, look, I actually loaded a picture to the blog. Yer old ma has finally done it. I thought you would like to see our crab apple tree in all it's splendor earlier this spring. And now the Beards are finishing our fence project even as we speak. They are adding the last segment separating the garden from the Albert Muir property. It is one solid fence and I expect it to be still standing as the earthquakes rage at the Second Coming.

Gold at the end of the rainbow

So there I was, with two friends watching Citizen Kane, when I received a call from my mother telling me to run outside and check out the rainbow that had appeared in front of the house. We proceeded to race outside, grabbing my camera to see if it could capture this spectacle in full 10 megapixel glory. And we were met with quite a sight.

Appearing to set down right in the field, directly in front of us, it was a phenomenal sight. Being the energetic, adventurous boys we are, we set off running into the field, towards the apparent touchdown site of the rainbow, chasing that legendary gold. And we found it.

Pelted with torrential rains, drenched to the core, and fully in awe of all God's creations, it was quite a moment.

Magnificent

And finally, here's a panorama of the whole thing. None of these pictures really do it all justice, but I thought'd I'd share.

Scope Creep

Many times at a work, I have been involved in projects that experience what we call "Scope Creep". The original project objective seems to expand as time goes on...the thought process goes something like this - As long as we are developing this new functionality, we might as well do some extra work because the reward is much greater than the effort.

At home, we often experience this same phenomena. Take yesterday for example. We started out with a simple objective – clean the garage. The goal was to spend about two hours performing this dreaded chore. Fearing the heat of the day, we (all five of us) got up relatively early, had breakfast (Uncle Ron’s Pancakes, Marilee’s healthy version) and started our project. My personal scope creep happened almost as soon as we started. I came across a mostly used container of Round-up. Hmm, might as well use this up. So I left the garage and canvassed the yard and located areas where I wanted to eradicate anything that grows on that spot. I successfully used up the rest of the container. I triumphantly tossed the spent container into the mostly empty garbage bag. My sense of accomplishment was short lived, however. As I surveyed the rest of the garage, I realized there was a ton of work left to do.
As I was cleaning off the work bench, I glanced over at the two shelves in the corner of the garage. I noticed how droopy they were. I thought of our resident master craftsman, Uncle Ron. These shelves would have no place in his garage. As long as we are cleaning the garage, I might as well replace the shelves. After I took the two shelves down, I noticed scuff marks and holes in the wall. Hmm, might was well paint the wall, especially since we have paint that has been sitting around for several years. You can’t paint without first putting spackle in all holes. After applying a little spackle and a lot of paint, the wall looked really good. A little too good. The adjacent wall looked terrible, especially the door and molding. Hmm, might as well paint the door while we are at it. While Kristin worked on the second wall, I went to the store to buy the supplies I needed to build the shelves. Kristin’s initial intent was to paint the door and molding. She couldn’t ignore the surrounding wall, so she painted the wall as well. Then she decided to paint the cabinet doors. The doors looked great when she finished, but the cabinet frames looked dingy. So she painted the frames.
Meanwhile, I proceeded to build the shelves. Of course, once the shelves were built and installed on the wall, they stuck out like a sore thumb. Luckily, we had enough paint left over to apply two coats to the shelves. At the end of the day, we had two new shelves, two painted walls (and cupboards) and a dirty garage. Looks like we will have Family Project, Part II coming up soon. Who knows, maybe by the time we are done, the entire garage will receive a fresh coat of paint. Hmm, I wonder what my 10 year old Camry will look like in a clean garage…